The Savior's Game (The Daniel Byrne Trilogy Book 3)

by Sean Chercover

  Daniel said, “Night before last, a professional tried to take me out.”

  “We know. We’ve been waiting for you to check in.”

  “You know, because . . .”

  “We’ve got cameras on the front and back of your house. We don’t look inside, we keep our distance, but we watch. I told you we would look out for you.” Ames crossed to the globe bar and poured a drink. “I don’t usually take liquor at sunrise, Daniel, and I hope that’s not the kind of life you’re living in Barbados. Honestly, you don’t appear well at all.” He looked Daniel in the eye. “How are you feeling these days?”

  “I’d feel fine if there weren’t an assassin trying to kill me.” Or worse. But Daniel had decided not to share the gruesome detail of the ECT machine in the back of the van, so that went unspoken for now.

  Ames held his dispassionate gaze on Daniel for a moment longer than was comfortable. Finally, he said, “At any rate, our cameras picked up your would-be assassin’s approach, and red-flagged our software, which pulled a screen grab clear enough to run through facial recognition.”

  “Who is he?”

  Carter Ames lifted his glass. “One drink to mark the occasion, and then we switch to coffee. I need you sharp.” He took a sip. “I am glad you’re alive. And glad you’ve come back, as much as I disapprove of your antagonistic approach.”

  Daniel gave him the deadeye for a couple seconds before speaking. “Man, give your head a shake. I haven’t come back. I don’t work for you anymore.”

  “We saved thousands of lives, Daniel. Perhaps hundreds of thousands.”

  “You’re rationalizing.”

  “You may not like it, but sometimes it really just does come down to the math of the thing. We killed a couple of hundred while saving many times that number. If we could’ve saved those people, we would have.”

  “Bullshit. You could’ve convinced your allies in the military to mount a rescue operation.” Daniel sipped his scotch. “They were civilian hostages. They deserved at least that.”

  “You know we couldn’t,” said Carter Ames. “Not without—”

  “—revealing your existence to the world, I know.”

  Ames sat in a leather chair by the coffee table. “This is exactly why I had Raoul remove you from the operation.”

  Daniel’s laugh came bitter from his mouth. “So it wasn’t about reading-in Kara at all. You didn’t have time to argue with me, so you benched me.”

  “And you responded by killing Conrad, against my explicit orders.” Before Daniel could reply, Ames said, “My point is, we both did something the other didn’t approve of.”

  Daniel placed his drink on the desk blotter, beside the pistol. “I put a mass murderer out of business. You ordered a goddamned drone strike on 263 innocents. These things are not morally equivalent.” He knew he should shut up, but this needed to be said. “And in a few months, America will have a hundred thousand troops back in the Middle East. Boots on the ground in active combat, because the world thinks Yemeni Islamists carried out a bioweapon attack in South Carolina. But somehow, by your calculus, the Foundation’s anonymity is more important than telling the world what really happened and stopping that war. How’s your math gonna look after you factor in the coming body count?”

  Carter Ames said, “The Foundation does not reveal itself, full stop. Revealed, we could no longer operate in the world with any real power. If we fail to remain in the game, we cannot continue to influence the future, and we cede control to those who do not flinch at atrocity. For God’s sake, you saw what the Council did in Liberia; you know what they would’ve done to those hostages, had they gotten away. Regardless, we do not reveal ourselves, and that’s the bottom line. So we shall simply have to agree to disagree, and move forward. Re-litigating the past is not productive.”

  “Then stop trying to recruit me. I’m not coming back.”

  After a moment, Ames nodded. “If you change your mind, let me know. As a Foundation operative, you’d be under our protection, and there is a man trying to kill you.”

  “Faulty logic,” said Daniel. “When last we spoke, you told me a truce on AIT had been reached—”

  “Indeed, and all indicators tell us the truce remains in place. The Council continues to compete with us over the cases of AIT that occur by . . . well, by nature. But they have made no further attempt to deploy the bacterium that can trigger AIT.”

  “Which still leaves revenge for Conrad’s death as a perfectly viable motive,” said Daniel. “But you told me a condition of that truce was the Council not putting a target on me. So I was already supposed to be under your protection. Either the Council has broken the terms of your truce, or someone inside your organization wants me dead badly enough to betray you.”

  “Those are the most obvious possibilities. Which is why I immediately put the IT team to the task of building a profile on the man who came after you. And I can tell you for a fact, he has no link to either the Council or the Foundation.” Ames put his drink on the coffee table and stood up. “Now if you’d like to see the file, kindly put the pistol away and get us some coffee.”

  6

  Carter Ames collected the pages as his printer spat them out, scanning the top page while he added the others behind it. “The man who tried to kill you is Lucien Drapeau.”

  An abandoned New Orleans housing project flashed in Daniel’s mind. Racing up the stairs to the sun-blistered rooftop, ducking bullets, scrambling around the corner of the building, hanging onto window ledges, swinging himself back up onto the roof . . . aiming, squeezing the trigger.

  He said, “That’s not possible. I—”

  Ames raised his hand. “You killed Drapeau, I know.” He sipped his coffee. “Lucien Drapeau is the highest-paid assassin in the Western Hemisphere—just think of the name not as a name but as a title. You killed the previous Lucien Drapeau. This man is his successor.”

  He handed the top sheet to Daniel. A vital statistics summary—height, weight, eye color, hair color—along with a headshot that looked like a passport photo. It was the man who had twice tried to kill Daniel . . . once in a meditation-induced AIT vision and once in real life.

  “The Drapeau legend is managed by a blue-chip law firm in Montreal. They keep several former PMs and cabinet ministers on the masthead, and their clients span the globe. But Drapeau isn’t just a hit man for international business; he does wetwork for the intelligence community, organized crime, wealthy jealous husbands. Drapeau and his managers at the firm are completely agnostic; they’ll take just about any client who can pay the fee, which is reputed to be over ten million dollars per contract. In essence, he’s a hit man for the one percent.”

  Daniel said, “Pat told me about the last Drapeau. Said clients know the man can be trusted not to talk—that comes with the fee—but they can’t expect ongoing loyalty. You could hire him to take out your business partner, and a week later your partner’s grieving widow could hire him to take you out.”

  Ames smiled. “Sounds like Pat. Perhaps a tad overstated, but essentially true. That’s the reputation, anyhow. As you well know, with the games we play and the stakes for which we play them, loyalty is the essential currency, the very bedrock on which we stand. Without it, we could not exist. And the same is true for our adversaries. I would not think so little of the Council to even consider that they would do business on such a basis. They’re far too smart for that. We must conclude that someone else entirely has decided to end your life. And that person has hired the very best.”

  “So it would appear,” said Daniel.

  Ames squared the remaining pages on the table. “This new Lucien Drapeau first appears forty-five days after the death of his predecessor, just after leaving a luxury private plastic surgery clinic in Cartagena. His appearance does not coincide with the disappearance of any elite assassins known to us, but he may have popped up from the military, paramilitary, just about anywhere.” He fixed Daniel with a long look. “We’re positively awash in s
killed, nihilistic assassins these days. Sign of the times, I’m afraid. At any rate, we don’t know who he was before he became Drapeau, and we don’t even know his original nationality. Our earliest hit on facial recognition was his arrival at Montreal’s Dorval Airport, post-surgery, just off a flight from JFK, originating in Colombia.” He handed another page across.

  It was a security camera image of Drapeau standing at the immigration counter, speaking with the border agent. Not a high-resolution image, but the Foundation’s computer geeks had cleaned it up and Daniel could just make out the thin pink line in front of the ear, leading down under the jaw, the subtle discoloration still fading around the eyes and at the sides of the nose, all of which had been digitally removed from the passport photo.

  “He’s had cheek implants,” said Daniel. “And his jaw line reshaped.”

  “And a nose job, and something with his brow, and although I can’t see it from this angle, I’d wager he’s also had his ears reshaped. There’s no way we can extrapolate his original face.” Ames sipped some coffee. “So we’ve devoted a great deal of computing power to tracking this face. Wherever he hangs his hat is off the grid. A few months ago, he pops up here in Manhattan, staying at the Grand Hyatt for six days. Eats at the Grand Central Oyster Bar and the Four Seasons, but dines alone. Drinks at the Rum House at the Edison on West Forty-Seventh—no camera coverage in the bar, but we scanned faces entering and exiting the hotel during his times there, found no persons of interest.”

  Ames handed two more pages to Daniel. “During Drapeau’s stay in town, an SEC investigator died of a slip-and-fall in the bathtub, and a particularly dirty hedge fund manager shot himself in the head. But we have no idea if Drapeau was behind either, both, or neither.”

  Daniel looked at the accompanying photographs and vital statistics of the two dead men, recognizing neither their faces nor their names. “What else have you got?”

  “We’ve got him in London for four days, during which time a banker who handled UK investments for some very bad Russian and Chinese billionaires died of a heart attack while in the company of a lady of the evening, and a Saudi prince overdosed on heroin. Again, we don’t know if there’s a connection to Drapeau, but if he was in London on a contract, these are his two most likely targets.”

  Daniel examined the pages. Nothing.

  “No other potential assassinations since London,” Ames continued, “but Drapeau did travel a great deal for meetings, popping up in DC, Montreal, Dallas, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Istanbul, Moscow.”

  “Anything connecting his contacts?”

  “Other than their wealth? Not particularly. All known associates are not only members of the one percent—they’re members of the one tenth of one percent. The barons of various industries. Finance, media, fossil fuels, military and intelligence, international arms sales, organized crime, politics. All plausible clients, but nothing that connects to AIT, or to you.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Drapeau visited New Orleans.” He held Daniel’s eye. “He was in your hometown for ten days, Daniel.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Basic due diligence—he’d build a profile on me, look for my patterns and weaknesses before making his approach.”

  “And he came straight to you in Barbados, where you were supposed to be living under the radar. But there has been no probing—no attempt whatsoever—to test the Ian Shefras legend. Our systems would’ve caught it. It seems Drapeau’s client already knew where to find you.”

  Ian Shefras was the new identity the Foundation had created for Daniel, and it should’ve been bulletproof, even if probed. It came complete with birth records, a Social Security number, school transcripts from kindergarten through college, tax records going back ten years, credit cards, a passport—the works. A full paper trail, for anyone who looked. The people in Barbados who knew Daniel knew him as Ian, a laid-back business consultant who’d sold his company and retired young, living off his investments—just another expat in paradise. But if there’d been no attempt to probe the identity, then Ames was right: Drapeau’s client must’ve already known where Daniel was hanging his hat.

  Ames took another long sip of coffee. “You were extremely lucky to get away once; he won’t miss a second time. Our door remains open to you. Step through it, and we’ll protect you while we find this man.”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Very well.” Ames put his cup back in its saucer. “It’s your funeral.”

  “You can use the money you keep dumping in my account to throw me a good send-off. Open bar, canapés, a brass band for the second line.”

  “Don’t be childish.” Ames glanced at the remaining pages in his hand. “You will come back to us, Daniel. And when you do, you will want to, or at least need to. But until then, Drapeau is your problem, and the Foundation will not devote any further attention to the problems of an outsider. I do hope you survive to come back, and toward that end, I’m sharing what we’ve learned. But after you leave here this morning, you are on your own. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Ames handed the pages across. “We’ve got twelve known associates for Drapeau, none connected in any way to the Council or the Foundation.”

  Daniel looked at the first page. A man in his sixties—petroleum lobbyist in Washington, face and name unfamiliar. The second page was a Montreal lawyer named Eric Murphy. Handsome, trim, late fifties.

  Ames said, “We believe Murphy is Drapeau’s manager at the firm. They’ve twice met for lunch at the Ritz-Carlton.”

  Daniel flipped through the pages. He recognized the media baron, as would most, and a few of the other faces, as would any reader of the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, or Wired. They were superstars of their respective worlds. But Daniel could see no reason any of them would even know of his existence, much less want him dead.

  The next page was a photo of Drapeau sitting with a redheaded man at an outdoor café. The man wore large sunglasses with mirrored lenses.

  “That was taken in Barcelona,” said Ames. “We have no idea who the other man is.”

  Daniel flipped to the final page and his heart jumped in his chest. He was staring into the face of the woman from his vision. It was an enlargement of a Spanish driver’s license. The name on the license: Dana Cameron.

  The voice in his head belonged to this woman.

  Daniel said, “Who’s Dana Cameron?” It required some effort to keep his tone neutral.

  “An American, professor of archeology, she’s been at the University of Barcelona almost seven years. She researches, lectures, publishes papers on her excursions. Cameron is a civilian, earns a professor’s salary, no connection to anything that we can see. Just an archeologist from New England.”

  New England. The accent matched. So the voice in Daniel’s head belonged to a woman who existed as a real person, in real life. The thought made him dizzy.

  He put it away for later. “She’s just a civilian, what’s her connection to Drapeau?”

  “We don’t know. He entered Spain under the name Larry Elias in the morning, met the man with the sunglasses for a café lunch, and then visited Dr. Cameron’s office, signing in at reception with his alias. He exited the building twenty minutes later and departed the country the same night.” Ames drank the last of his coffee, put the cup in the saucer, and stood. “And now that I’ve told you what we’ve learned, our assistance is at an end.”

  Daniel stood and shrugged into his coat, picked up his kit bag. “Thanks for sharing, Carter. Have a nice day.”

  Ames waited until Daniel was at the door, then said, “One more thing. If you ever again approach me with a gun in your hand, I will have you killed.”

  Daniel stopped and turned. Without changing his expression at all, Ames let him see the hard man behind the urbane façade, just for a moment, and then put it away again. Nice trick.

  Daniel said, “If I ever again approach you with a gun in my hand, it won’t be to talk.” He po
inted up, toward the rooftop skylight through the ceiling. “And by the way, I just flagged the hole in your security apparatus. I did you a favor. But no need to thank me. You’re welcome.”

  Carter Ames didn’t smile, but his face softened ever so slightly.

  “Survive to come back, Daniel. Good hunting.”

  7

  Daniel squinted at the late-afternoon sun reflecting off the ocean’s surface. The sun that never moved. He stood barefoot on the beach, his pants rolled into loose cuffs just below his knees.

  Dana Cameron stood facing him, smiling as her hair whipped wild in the warm wind. She wore a faded red T-shirt with a yellow lightning bolt in a white circle—the logo of the Flash—and a long blue beach wrap. She wiggled her toes in the sand.

  Daniel said, “You like the Flash?”

  She nodded, her grin widening. “The question is: Does the Flash move very quickly, or does he slow time?” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “Anyway, time is just how we experience change, and forward is how we experience entropy, so in our reality time appears to move forward—but according to physics, our experience of the passage of time is just an illusion.”

  “Okay but without the riddles, please,” said Daniel. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  Dana Cameron pointed at Daniel’s feet. “Wiggle your toes.”

  Daniel started awake under sweat-soaked sheets, his mouth still burning with the taste of cinnamon, forehead cold and clammy, headache raging, heart pounding against his ribs.

  Sunlight fought its way into the room through a gap in the drapes. The bedside clock read 2:56 p.m.

  He untangled himself from the sheets, walked shivering to the thermostat, and cranked the heat. Flipped on the bathroom light, fumbled through his dopp kit, and managed to pour a couple of BC headache powders onto his tongue without spilling much. He filled a glass at the sink and poured water in and around his mouth and got the bitter powder down. He shivered his way over to the tub, spun the shower on hot.